


Carved with Love

by legallyblindandrea



Category: Les Misérables (2012)
Genre: Grantaire is Russian, Les Amis de l'ABC - Freeform, M/M, They are all from other countries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-27 00:17:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1707896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/legallyblindandrea/pseuds/legallyblindandrea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sitting beside him with a beer and a bottle of Coke for Grantaire, he showed him what to do, over and over again; as slowly the piece of wood changed into an object as they sat on the balcony.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>“This piece of wood is called balsa and it comes from the Balsa tree from Southern Brazil and Bolivia”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Carved with Love

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know where this came from I just started writing and this came out; I need a Beta I know because there are tons of mistakes but please over look them until I can get someone to look this over for me. I got my translations from google translate and from freetranslation.com so I’m not sure how right they are.
> 
> Ok so yea I need to fix this.

“Guillotine” he blinked and shook his head as if to clear the cobwebs. 

“Wait. What did you say?” 

Grantaire asked as he started to carve the next letter into the leg of the table.

“Did you hear a word I said?” he grinned and nodded before blowing the fallen wood bits from his leg. 

“Guillotine and that was about it, why you have somewhere else to go at 2 in the morning? Is my pretty face not good enough for you to look at any longer?” 

Grantaire laughed as he was hit in the back of the head by a pillow which Enjolras had thrown from the couch. 

“Gee I don’t really see your face since you won’t let me sit over there; in fact you haven’t let any of us see what you have under that sheet, so all I get to see is your back and the paint and wood that is all around and in your hair.” 

He laughed and held his hand up to give Enjolras the finger; he could hear Enjolras laugh behind him as everything fell into a comfortable silence as his laugh faded away. 

He could hear Enjolras’s breathing even out as he went back to reading the book he had been reading all night.

Grantaire looked down to the chair leg and ran his finger over the letters he had carved into the leg, he still had one more letter to finish then it would be finished.

He would let Enjolras (and later on everyone else because it was 2am after all) see his work. 

He would take the blanket off the table that was covering it and its legs and he would remove the pieces of paper he had taped to the back and to the legs of the chairs so it covered the words he had carved there.

He had started working on carving the words into the table and chairs 13 months ago, sometimes he went for days or weeks without carving anything and other times he spent hours just carving and he would forget everything around him.

They all called it his Zone.

Enjolras had one too once he got into speech mode or research mode, nothing they did could pull either man from what they were doing or saying and only sometimes after hours did they seem to come back to earth.

Grantaire had been in hospital for about a week 2 months ago with a bad case of pneumonia and it took him a long time to recover where he felt like his normal self; he did little to none of the carving then.

But since then he has caught up on carving what he wanted to get done and wasn’t very far from the deadline he had set himself when he first started this project.

He can still remember the first time he carved his first piece of wood, he was 7 and his Uncle had sat beside him and thrust a piece of wood into his empty hands before handing him a knife.

Sitting beside him with a beer and a bottle of Coke for Grantaire, he showed him what to do, over and over again; as slowly the piece of wood changed into an object as they sat on the balcony.

“This piece of wood is called balsa and it comes from the Balsa tree from Southern Brazil and Bolivia” 

He can remember the smell of beer and wood and the sounds of the cars, people and birds going on all around them as they sat on the balcony, the tank he could see down below on the courtyard was left behind as a monument to remember the Battle of Stalingrad.

His first piece had been a simple little trinket that he gave to his mother and soon he had made a carving of the tank that he saw every day outside his living room window; his father was very proud of that one.

Once he was good enough and his hands knew what to do his Uncle took him to see The Motherland Calls (Родина-мать зовёт!) sculpture in Mamayev Kurgan, Volgograd; he can still remember the trip and the day he spent with his uncle before going home to start on his carving. 

He still has the carving of the statue; it sits on the shelf beside a picture of himself and everyone taken one day when they were all at the Tuileries Garden.

He has been carving since then and he had sold a few things at the market to make money as he grew up, he also has a set of knives he would only use on special items; his uncle had given them to him when he turned 13. 

He finds carving calms him down and helps him remember the good times before he moved to live with his uncle in France after his father became abusive after his mother’s death when he was 12.

That’s not to say he doesn’t like things now, he has Enjolras and everyone else after all but he does miss the way things were when he was younger with his mother and father and the life he had in Russia.

He hasn’t seen his father in 8 years; it was his uncle and aunt who raised him from the age of 12 and they were the ones to show up to his high school graduation and love him like his parents used to before his mother died and his father changed.

His uncle is his father’s brother, he did everything for Grantaire and said he has his mother’s eyes and hair but his father’s skin; his drinking habits on the other hand Grantaire tried to hide but he knew his aunt and uncle knew.

Everyone knew he was a depressed, anxiety ridden alcoholic.

But he was good at this. 

Good at carving, painting, sketching and loving Enjolras, he could never be bad at those things no matter how much alcohol he’s had.

“Don’t worry Apollo you can see it soon” 

He said as he turned his head to look at Enjolras who was now lying upside down on the couch, his blond hair falling like waves below him towards the floor.

He waved at Grantaire laughing before smiling back, even from the distance Grantaire could see the love in his deep blue eyes; the blue eyes Grantaire loved to look at and feel like he could go on forever just doing so. 

“Soon as in tonight-soon or soon as in within the next century-soon?” 

Grantaire snorted and turned back to the task at hand not answering Enjolras who he knew wasn’t expecting him to.

He had to carve the last letter in the word he had picked; he would carve the same word twice somewhere on the chair or table because he wanted Enjolras to be able to read it; so it was done once in Russian and once in French.

He only knew three words in Swedish which were love, family and yes; no matter how much Enjolras tried to teach him he just couldn’t get the hang of Enjolras’s native language.

He was happy only knowing Russian and French thank you very much.

Grantaire let the knife rest in his hand as he looked at the word he was carving and let his mind wander; his thoughts turned to moving to live with his Aunt and Uncle when he was 12.

He had just started grade 7 in Volgograd at age 12 when his mother died and his father hadn’t taken it well but everyone said after he grieved the loss of his wife he’d be ok and get back to living and raising his now motherless son.

Those people were wrong; his father changed into a mean man who did nothing but drink and yell at Grantaire.

He would spend all their money on booze and Grantaire can remember going days without food and he had learned how to get along fine and stay out of his father’s way.

Until he couldn’t and he was beat; his father blaming him for the loss of his mother, telling him he was the reason she died.

It had taken 7 weeks after his mother’s death for his life to change even more when his Uncle took charge of him on October 30th 2000 after school when Grantaire came home to find him sitting in the living room; his father was beside him with a bottle of Putinka vodka (Путинка водка).

“Your Uncle is here Grantaire you go and live with him now; leave me alone and get out” 

Those were the words his father said before getting up off the couch, throwing Grantaire’s passport to his Uncle and storming out of the apartment taking his bottle with him leaving Grantaire alone with his Uncle; he can remember crying and then everything else is a blur until he settles into a hotel room later that night exhausted and worn out.

Everything he wanted to take with him right now was packed and ready to go in suite cases, some things would be shipped to him in France and other things he would just buy new.

He made sure to grab all his wood carving things and the trinket he had gave his mother, the first thing he had ever made.

He was going to visit her grave tomorrow before leaving Volgograd to make the 8 hour flight from the Volgograd International Airport (Международный Аэропорт Волгоград) to the Nice Côte d'Azur Airport (Aéroport Nice Côte d'Azur) in his new home to live with his Uncle and his Aunt; a French woman like his mother. 

The transition from life in Russia to life in France was big; for one thing school in Russia went from September 1st to the end of May while school in France started in August and went until June and in France he had to go to school until he was 18.

It was a hard change and he knew he was lucky he knew French but he still got angry and spoke in Russian not being able to explain something as well as he wanted to in French.

The children would make fun of him for his accent or his lack of knowledge of French history or his general confusion of things that they knew when they were younger then him.

Children were mean beings and knew how and where to pick to make it hurt the most.

He spoke French like he was born there now at age 26 but when he was tired or having a bad day he knew his accent would come through and some days when he thought in Russian it would come out as such when he spoke; his friends were used to it since they too had French as a second language being from all over the world.

He also learned how to spell the word family in each of his friends languages; English, Creole, Irish Gaelic, Danish, Swedish, Spanish, Polish, Scottish Gaelic, Hungarian, German and Mohawk as well as putting it on there in his native Russian.

Family, fanmi, Familie, mo mhuintir, Familj, Familia, Rodzina, Familia, Mo teaghlach, Család, Familie, kahwatsire and Семья.

Because that’s what they all were; one big family.

“Ok that’s it” he said after he made sure to have wiped down everything and it was clean. 

He knew he would have to give it its finishing spray of polyurethane to give it the high gloss look he wanted and to keep it safe from use but that would happen tomorrow or the next day.

He had worked on the table and chairs in his Uncles shop to get the right look he wanted using a router to do the lettering on the table top and the harder places like the legs he would use his knife.

His uncle had helped him move it into the apartment and make sure it was covered completely so he could finish working on it at home and after it was finished he would help Grantaire put the polyurethane spray on it in the apartment so they didn’t have to move it again. 

“Careful it doesn’t have the finish on it yet but here I even named it, like a good artist would” 

He grinned and thrust the piece of paper into the waiting hands; he could see the smile grow on Enjolras’s face as he looked over the words on the paper as few times before moving to look at the table.

He ran a finger over the Cyrillic letters Желая which Grantaire told him was the word wishing. 

“Grantaire…this is amazing” he said, he was in awe never having seen something like this, words carved into a dining room table and chair set look so beautiful and perfect.

“Look here is family in Swedish” 

Enjolras looked to the left table leg where Grantaire was pointing and could see the word Familj was just above семья, the same word in Russian.

He eyed Grantaire who shrugged while laughing “what can I say other then it fit.” 

Enjolras shook his head as he studied the mahogany table and chairs some more, never keeping his gaze one on spot long before running his fingers over the words as well. 

“’Aire this is-” 

Enjolras paused turning to look at Grantaire before smiling and letting out a puff of air before he grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him to him kissing him.

He felt Grantaire wrap his arms around his hips holding him to him, he let his right hand move to Grantaire’s hair where it moved through the hair as he tightened his grip on Grantaire’s shirt all the while kissing him; he could feel Grantaire kissing him back just as hard.

Pulling apart for air Enjolras grinned as he just looked at Grantaire who was looking back at him with his left hand on Enjolras’s right hip and the left tucked in the back pocket of his jeans.

“That piece of amazing art is awe inspiring; you are awe inspiring and a beautiful person. You have so much talent and I am glad to be the one you chose to show it all to. I am glad and thank the lucky stars every day that we are together.” 

“Even if I don’t show it every day or you don’t either because let’s face it we can both be pretty bad sometimes but we are only human.”

Grantaire laughed and nodded because yes they both could be pretty bad; their fights were horrible sometimes and they could both get into dark moods.

“But now I have to ask” 

He could see amusement on Enjolras’s face as he paused, Grantaire never moved his hands from where he had them placed and he felt Enjolras tug on his shirt before speaking again.

“Where are we going to eat now? Because that is too beautiful to eat upon and wreck”

Grantaire laughed shaking his head before squeezing his hip with a grin as Enjolras laughed.

“We could just eat TV dinners on the couch or mooch from our co-dependent friends who we both know they wouldn’t tell us to shove off; they are scared of your ice glare. Ok but back to kissing, kissing is nice.”

Standing in the dining room covered in a fine layer of wood dust and the clock ticking on in the quiet apartment they stood and kissed until the need to breathe won out; they won’t be able to say come morning how long they stood in the dust beside the table and chairs before moving to the bedroom.

**Author's Note:**

> Grantaire named it Carved with Love so that's the name of this fic.
> 
>  **Carved with Love** \- English  
>  **Sculpté avec Amour** \- French  
>  **Резные C любви** \- Russian  
>  **Snidade med Älskar** \- Swedish
> 
>  
> 
> Ok so most of them are from Europe I know that but it just kind of happened.


End file.
